


Kisses Like Awkward Flowers

by Kleenexwoman



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Illya's love of jazz, M/M, awkward dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 12:10:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5416481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/pseuds/Kleenexwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I am not the kind of man who thinks of giving a girl flowers after a date. I must be told." Illya is the most awkward person to date. Napoleon doesn't think so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kisses Like Awkward Flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jkkitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jkkitty/gifts).



> Based on a true story. If you can't recycle the most embarrassing parts of your past by using them to entertain other people, what good is being a writer? ;) I hope you enjoy it!

"So," Napoleon asks, "what are you doing on Friday night?" 

Illya thoughtfully chews on his pizza. The sauce is too sweet, the dough flat, but the pepperoni is crispy and it's the only day when the cafeteria ladies don't give him a dirty look when he comes back for seconds. "That depends. Are you asking me to work late to do paperwork, or is there something more exciting planned?" He forks a chunk of iceberg salad into his mouth. 

"A double date, actually." Napoleon points to a pair of women at the next table, a statuesque blonde and a petite brunette. "Pick either--they both agreed you'd make the call. But if it's all the same to you, I do like blondes." 

Both girls raise their hands and wave at Illya, breaking out in sunny smiles. Illya lifts a slice of pizza to his mouth and gingerly raises his left hand, waving as he shoves the crust into his mouth. "Yes, hello there," he says, mouth full of pizza. 

Napoleon reaches over and covers Illya's mouth with his hand, smiling winningly at the girls. "Well," he says to Illya, "that's one way to get them to leave you alone, if that's what you want." 

"What if I do?" 

Napoleon pouts. Illya has been getting used to Napoleon's rather ridiculous faces, the casual pats and slaps on the back that he receives from his new friend. A mouth over the hand is a little new, but he thinks he's willing to let it go. "Well, that would ruin at least three evenings. What have you got to do that's more interesting than dancing with Audrey at the Butterscotch Lounge?" 

"It depends. What do they play?" 

"Friday nights it's Scott Bradlee and his Modern Juke Band. Does rock 'n' roll sounds in a big band style. Audrey loves it." 

"Pass. I hate big band." 

"Illya, you're not there for the music. You're there for the girls." 

"I am not there for the girls. I am not there at all." 

"The Butterscotch Lounge has burgers the size of your head. And I'll pay." 

"You really do want me to come with you, don't you?" Illya glances over towards the girls, who are stealing occasional glances at them back. "I'm quite certain you could entertain Audrey and her friend by yourself." 

"No, Audrey's the friend. Marilyn's the blonde." 

"I see. I'm just surprised you don't want them both to yourself." 

"Pleasure shared is pleasure doubled." Napoleon winks at him. 

Illya sighs. 

*

The date is unsuccessful. Audrey's main topics of conversation are her cats and the "Lord of the Rings" series, neither of which Illya has any experience with. When she runs out of stories about Gimli, her tabby kitten, Illya wracks his brain for conversation openers and doesn't find any except for the weather. 

"New York is not as cold as Kiev, this time of year," he says. 

Instead of responding, Audrey props her chin on her hand and gazes out at the dance floor. Marilyn and Napoleon are twirling each other around, Napoleon as light on his feet as a Fred Astaire. "I'm sorry if I'm boring you," she says. "I'm such a drip on dates." 

"I'm sorry I don't have much to say," Illya says. He eyes her plate, which is still full of French fries. 

Audrey pushes them across the table to Illya. "I'm on a diet. Go ahead before they get cold." 

Illya drags a fry through a puddle of ketchup. "Thank you." 

"Don't mention it. Do you want to dance?" 

"Not really. Unless you want to," Illya amends, to show willing. 

"Never mind. At least I got a burger out of it." Audrey sighs. "Look, please don't think I'm fishing for presents--but would you mind sticking some flowers or chocolates or something on my desk tomorrow? It doesn't have to be fancy." 

Illya chews on a French fry, thinking about it. "Will people think we're, ah, going steady?" 

"No. It's just going to look a little embarrassing for both of us when Marilyn gets a big bouquet or a box of chocolates or something from Solo, and I wind up with nothing. He always gives girls presents after a date, whether they put out or not." 

"For both of us, hmm?" 

"I'll look like a wet blanket. You'll look like a cheapskate." 

"Very well. Do you prefer dandelions, or Hershey bars? Wait--you are on a diet. Dandelions, then." 

"You think you're cute," Audrey grouses. "You are. That's the problem." 

*

Marilyn accompanies Audrey home, and Napoleon invites himself up to Illya's apartment for a postmortem. "You ate her French fries," he says. "I can't believe you did that." 

"She didn't seem to mind," Illya points out. 

"Of course she's not going to say anything, she's on a date with a boy she likes. Have you ever been on a date? I mean, what do Russian women do when you steal their food?" 

"I had one stab me in the hand with a fork," Illya says. 

"...a fork?" 

"Russian women are very straightforward. You know where you stand." 

"So I see." Napoleon makes himself comfortable on Illya's sagging couch. He looks like something out of a cigarette ad, the polished man about town with his tuxedo just a little undone, arms spread out over dingy furniture. "You were going to take her back here?" 

"Where else would I take her? Assuming that she hadn't left, of course." 

"Oh, one of the nicer safehouses. A few of us keep our favorites stocked with champagne and condoms." 

"Hmm. Well." Illya settles himself in the nest of cushions he's set up on the floor next to his "work" bookcase, not wanting to process this information and what it might suggest about the atmosphere at UNCLE. He scans the room, trying to spot anything embarrassing--a pair of dirty socks left out on the floor, a cockroach. But of course, there's something conspicuously missing from the scene, and he rises again. "I'll get us something to drink. Do you want tea or red wine? That's all I have." 

"Whatever you're having." 

"A compromise, then." Illya goes to the kitchen and returns with a bottle of wine and two coffee mugs. He pours a generous dollop into each mug and hands one to Napoleon. "To what shall we drink?" 

Napoleon leans forward and clinks his mug against Illya's. "To international cooperation--even if our dates left." 

"To international cooperation." Illya drinks deeply from his mug. The wine is cloyingly sweet. "I assume you weren't relying on my influence to impress Marilyn." 

Napoleon smiles. "No, I can't say I was. But you were hardly cooperative." 

"I imagine that if I had liked the girl or the venue, or both, I would have been more so." 

"Really, Illya. I go to all this trouble to set you up on a date with a girl who's crazy about you, and you don't even try?" Napoleon tsks at him. "What do I have to do?" 

"Who says I wanted to go on a date with her?" 

"Why wouldn't you?" The question comes across as honest, mild. "Let me ask you this--what would you be doing tonight if I hadn't convinced you to go out? Paperwork?" 

Illya thinks about the club on Christopher Street, the one Mark Slate had given him the address and password to. It's clear that Napoleon isn't fishing for information he could use for any real leverage, which is encouraging. No, he can't tell Napoleon where he is going. Not yet. But he can trust him with something small. 

He gets up and goes into his bedroom. "Follow me, please." 

"Illya?" He can hear Napoleon's footsteps on the wood floors behind him. Illya kneels down before the bed. He can see Napoleon's shiny black shoes next to him. "Illya, what are you doing?" 

"I go to jazz clubs." Illya pulls out his records. Stacks of wax, he thinks. He starts fanning them out on the floor. Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, John Coltrane. "And if I can't find a recital--which I nearly always can--I listen to these." 

"Really." Napoleon squats down next to him. "Cool jazz?" 

"It is the one true American art form, is it not?" Illya tugs out his record player. It's a Crosley with two speakers built in on either side, but he's invested in an excellent pair of stereo headphones already. 

Coltrane floats over Illya, blue and smoky. He doesn't smoke, but the sound of Coltrane always brings back the enticing scent of Gauloises in Le Hippopotame Bleu, the first place he ever thought home could be somewhere other than a little house in Kiev. That had been after Oxford, his first year of working for the UNCLE--on assignment in France. Hunting down a cadre of second-generation Nazis, pretending to be an English student abroad. 

"The reason I would prefer not to date," he says, "is what you've seen tonight. I don't have much to interest women, once you get past the hair." 

"And the eyes," Napoleon adds. 

"Very well. But--" 

"And the lips. We can't forget the lips." 

"You've heard a lot about them recently, haven't you?" Illya asks wryly. 

"I keep my ears open." 

Illya drains his mug. "Sorry. I rarely get second dates, is the point." 

"Nah," Napoleon says dismissively. "First time jitters." 

"Of course. And second time. Third time. She usually gives up before that." 

Napoleon actually laughs out loud. "Come on. I know you know how to talk to people." 

"I know how to talk to you." 

"You've got that aura of mystique." Napoleon props his chin on his hand, dark brown eyes evaulating Illya. "Don't try to talk to them. Just...smolder." 

"Smolder." Illya rolls his eyes. 

Napoleon grins at him. "You do it when you try to look angry when you're really not." 

Illya looks away from him. "That's an unfortunate tell," he murmurs. 

"It is," Napoleon admits. "But it takes a little attention to figure out." 

Illya closes his eyes. 

"See?" Napoleon murmurs. "You're very good at flirting." 

"Thank you." Illya gets up and takes his coffee mug into the kitchenette. "A skill I should practice, I suppose." 

"Practice makes perfect." The floor creaks a little under unseen footsteps. Illya can sense Napoleon's presence behind him. 

"And once I get someone home? What do I do after that? I have a twin bed, a couch, and a record player." Illya is staying very still now. It's a little bit dangerous to even wonder whether Napoleon is really flirting with him or not, instead of dismissing it altogether. But he's wondering. 

"You give them some red wine in a cup and put on Coltrane." Napoleon's hand is on his shoulder. "Seems to work for you." 

He's speaking low, slow, his mouth next to Illya's ear. Illya closes his eyes, anticipation building in the pit of his stomach. "Napoleon, why did you try so hard to set me up with Audrey?" 

"I wanted to do something nice for you. I wasn't sure of the ethics of giving presents to a Communist." Napoleon's lips brush across the nape of Illya's neck, or maybe that's Illya's imagination. "Anyway, I wasn't sure what you liked." 

"How diplomatic. And now you do." 

"Jazz, red wine, and hopefully me." This time, the lips are unmistakable, pressing a soft and moist kiss to the back of his neck. 

"If we do this," Illya asks, "will I find a bouquet of flowers on my desk tomorrow?" 

"Mmm. Do you want flowers?" 

"No. And no chocolates." 

"That rules out a lot. I'll have to skip straight to a diamond bracelet." 

Illya thinks of mounting gifts, Napoleon looking at him with expectation in his eyes, and then the disappointment that comes after. Disappointment always comes. 

He moves away from Napoleon, shedding him like a second skin. "I'll see you tomorrow, then?" 

"Oh." The disappointment is already leaching into Napoleon's voice. "Sure, I guess so." 

Illya heads back to his room, and after a moment he hears the door to his apartment click shut. He doesn't bother to see if Napoleon has gone. 

*

Illya places a small white box on Audrey's desk. "Here," he says. 

Audrey looks up from her translating. Her mouth curves into a soft smile, and then dissipates into a frown. "Fine time you picked. Everyone's out to lunch." 

"All the better. You can bask in the attention of the other ladies, and I can escape it." Illya nods at the box. "You can open it now, but you don't have to." 

"All right." Audrey pushes aside her papers and lifts the top off the box. She fishes out the glittering object within it. "Oh..." It dangles over her desk. "It's very nice, Illya." 

Audrey's present is a keychain attached to a little stuffed tabby cat. Illya had traveled nearly half a block out of his way to visit a little toy store, vaguely assuming that they'd have either something cat-shaped or something wizard-shaped. 

"I thought it probably looked like Gimli," Illya explains. 

"It does." Audrey strokes the top of the stuffed cat's head with one finger. "I didn't expect you to get something like this." 

"Roses aren't exactly in my budget." 

"I like this better." Audrey smiles again. "I really do." 

"Thank you." 

"I'm not doing anything tonight. Maybe you'd like to come over to my place and meet the real Gimli?" Audrey's smile is genuine, now. 

Illya seriously considers it. They've already agreed upon a charade to spare their reputations--what's one more? But Audrey might really like him, and it wouldn't be fair to her to pretend. She doesn't deserve that. "Perhaps some other time. We wouldn't want to do your reputation too much damage." 

* 

Napoleon is leaning against Illya's lab equipment when Illya comes back in from lunch. "Audrey gave you a satisfactory review," he says. His face is pleasant, neutral. "I suppose you're going to be meeting her cat soon." 

"She's a nice young woman. I didn't want to be too gauche. But no, I don't suppose I'll ever be in a position to catsit." 

"That's just as well. Cats can be more trouble than they're worth." 

"I suppose. I had one in college, and it ran away." Illya turns his attention to the reaction he's been nurturing for three hours. It's still green, unfortunately, meaning that the explosive won't be as quick-acting as he thought it would be. 

"Well, I just came down to check on that chemical reaction, anyway." 

Illya frowns at the test tubes. "The replacement for plastic explosive?" 

"The, ah, other chemistry." Napoleon gives him a meaningful look. "Everything all right? Neutral, at least?" 

"Ah. You mean last night." Illya scribbles down the color of the reaction. He takes a deep breath, then turns to face Napoleon. "Everything is fine. I wasn't offended, if that's what you mean." 

Napoleon's eyebrows raise a little, his face hopeful. "So--" 

"No," Illya says. "You'd be disappointed." 

"I think you should leave that to me to decide." 

"I promise you, it is not worth it." Illya turns away. 

"Oh? Why not?" 

Illya searches for an easy way to say it, something flippant and dismissive. How he makes the wrong gestures at the wrong time, gives up entirely after a while. How his relationships seem to fade out of his hands, rather than ending with a fight or anything to mark them. "I am not the kind of man who thinks of giving a girl flowers after a date. I must be told." 

Napoleon sticks his hands in his pockets, walks around the lab station to face Illya. His eyes are distorted oddly by test tubes for a moment, his mouth cut in half by a pipette. "Oh, I think you're better at it than you think. Audrey introduced me to Gimlet just now." 

"She named the toy, didn't she?" 

"She's very taken with it. You did a good job." 

"Well, I heard a lot about him." 

"Give yourself a chance," Napoleon says. 

"What? With Audrey?" 

"With anyone. Who made you think you were a disappointment, anyway?" 

"Enough dates so that I know better by now. You must understand--these things are very tiring to me, Napoleon." Illya looks at Napoleon through the graduated cylinder. Napoleon is bright green, his elongated features serious and thoughtful. 

"I see. You think you'll get tired of me." 

"I don't have the patience for it, Napoleon. The presents. The flirting. The talks about love." He moves to the end of the table, away from Napoleon's solemn look. 

Napoleon meets him there, blocking his path. "You don't like presents," he says, "and you don't like talking." 

"About love. Anything else is fine." 

"And you don't like flirting." A coquettish tone has creeped into Napoleon's voice. "A shame. You're very good at it." 

"I'm not. I can't make up pretty verses about the moon like you can." 

"You don't have to. I like you. I'm not expecting anything else but what you are." Napoleon presses a soft kiss to Illya's cheek. "I'm not asking you to say yes if you don't want to. I'm just asking you to believe me." 

"I don't know what you see in me!" Illya didn't mean to make it a cry, something plaintive and real. It was easy to believe that Napoleon was trying to befriend a lonely, awkward, too-blunt Soviet scientist out of compassion. There's no way Napoleon could be trying to seduce him out of compassion. 

He swears he won't look away. Napoleon stares at him for a moment with those big brown eyes, blank, and then his face forms into an O of surprise. "Is that it? Really?" 

"I'm uncooperative," Illya says, a little defensively. "For one thing." 

"Well, I still hold out a little bit of hope that you'll agree to cooperate with me," Napoleon says. He bends his head and kisses Illya again, this time on the mouth. It's a sweet kiss, close-mouthed and soft. Illya can feel Napoleon's tongue flicker along his lips for just a moment, and then the agent draws back. 

"You keep surprising me," Napoleon says. "And I hope I can surprise you, a little." 

"That was a surprise," Illya says, faintly. He can feel a warm blush making its way up his throat, encroaching over his cheeks. 

"Then this one won't be." 

Napoleon's second kiss is slow, and Illya can see it coming for miles. He opens his mouth, capturing Napoleon's lips first. But it's Napoleon who slips his tongue inside Illya's mouth, who puts his hands on Illya's shoulders and backs him up against the wall. 

"I've been wanting to do that for weeks," Napoleon breathes. "I hope you have, too." 

"I haven't dared to think about it," Illya confesses. 

Napoleon presses his lips to the hollow of Illya's throat. "Think about it now. All right?" 

"I'm thinking." And behind the pleasure, the delight of having the taste of Napoleon's lips on his mouth--Illya is. He wishes his mind would shut up sometimes, leave him to enjoy the moment without forecasting disaster. Is it worth it? When it's all over and Napoleon's slipped out of his hands, will it have been worth it? 

Maybe he'll let Napoleon surprise him.


End file.
